Construction of Strength Two Mixed Covering Arrays Using Greedy Mutation in Genetic Algorithm

Metaheuristic methods are capable of solving a wide range of combinatorial problems competently. Genetic algorithm (GA) is a metaheuristic search based optimization algorithm that can be used to generate optimal Covering Arrays (CAs) and Mixed Covering Arrays (MCAs) for pair-wise testing. Our focus in the work presented in this paper is on the strategies of performing mutation in GA to enhance the overall performance of GA in terms of solution quality and computational time (number of generations). This is achieved by applying a greedy approach to perform mutation at a position that minimizes the loss of existing distinct pairs in the parent CA/MCA and ensures that the generated offspring is of good quality. Experiments are conducted on several benchmark problems to evaluate the performance of the proposed greedy based GA with respect to the existing state-of-the-art algorithms. Our evaluation shows that the proposed algorithm outperforms its GA counterpart by generating better quality MCA in lesser number of generations. Also the proposed approach yields better/comparable results compared to the existing state-of-the-art algorithms for generating CAs and MCAs. Index Terms—Pair-wise testing, mixed covering arrays, genetic algorithm, mutation, greedy approach.